As an artist Eden’s acts of noticing, collecting and careful assemblage are a form of practice-led research focused on the ontology of waste and human attitudes towards our shared ecology. Her work brings into question the material and cultural value of that which is discarded; treating fragmented plastics and other debris with a level of care usually reserved for precious minerals or culturally significant resources. She celebrates the energy and story embodied within these objects in states of transition, thinking of their material origins and unique patinas while also viewing them as relics of a broader human culture of consumerism and disposability.
Fragments in Flux
Eden Payne, Fragments in Flux, 2025 & 2026
Journeyed from the depths of the earth as energy and time materialised, pumped through hot pipes and refined to be transformed. To be held or to hold; beloved or useful. Until a moment when human care was withdrawn from them, no longer deemed loveable or useful they became discarded. Some piled in skip bins, redirected by the hands of tip workers. Others escaped as fragments; riding on wind, floating on ocean. None could find a true way to return to where they came from, the earth couldn’t recognise them in their current form. So it falls to humans to do the recognising, to act as nature does in turning our byproducts of living, that which is trying to decay, back to new life.
The first work in the series, Fragments in Flux, was originally commissioned by Gosford Regional Gallery as a part of their public collection; the work is currently installed and can be viewed on the exterior of the gallery building. Following editions expand on this work in a smaller scale using the same methods, beaten aluminium backing creates a water-like reflective surface to showcase the plastics found predominantly on beaches within Bouddi National Park.
Constellations in Flux
Eden Payne, Constellations in Flux, 2026
Made up of 380 found objects, Constellations in Flux is a continuation of the artists exploration into the nature of waste. Suspended as kinetic sculpture, the work subtly shifts with air currents while viewed, highlighting the dynamic relationality of objects within states of transition. Audiences are encouraged to slow down and be immersed, enacting the same kind of noticing that the artist engages in when collecting the pieces. This work draws conceptual inspiration from Jane Bennett’s Influx & Efflux, proposing that boundaries between objects, the body and the environment are porous and constantly in flux. By subtly blending and blurring perceptions between ‘natural’ and ‘human-made’, the work questions this constructed divide that reinforces the idea of humans and our creations as being separate from nature; an idea that the artist believes perpetuates an attitude of carelessness and ecologically insensitive ways of being. The collection of pieces aims to simultaneously invoke awe, beauty with a hint of confusion.
